The Man who Killed the King

by Dennis Wheatley

  With the spontaneous movement of a herd, they crowded out into the main hall. Running and shouting, they dashed up the stairs and into the vast Council Chamber which occupied the whole of the first floor. The Municipals there had just learned of Mandat’s arrest and were about to order his release. In vain a few of them stuck to their guns and insisted that they were the legally elected representatives of the Communes of Paris. The insurrectionists flung them out, retaining only Pétion and Manuel, now under arrest for their own protection, as members ex officio of the new Commune.

  There followed an orgy of destruction. The walls of the great Chamber were decorated with the portraits and busts not only of past Kings, but also of such Fathers of the Revolution as Necker, Bailly and Lafayette. All were torn down, ripped and smashed. Then, amidst the dust and debris, they voted themselves the Conseil Général de la Revolution, with supreme powers to carry out the “Will of the People”.

  News now came in that the troops on the Pont Neuf, having failed to receive instructions from Mandat to ignore the order from the Commune, had surrendered the bridge, and that the head of the mob streaming over it had penetrated the Place du Carrousel. In spite of that, Roger remained very hopeful that the insurrection would yet fizzle out. From what he had heard it was clear that, in addition to the 950 Swiss, there were 2,500 trustworthy National Guards prepared to defend the Palace, and, on top of that, several hundred gentlemen who had congregated there during the night, ready to give their lives rather than allow the Royal Family to be killed or taken prisoners.

  Knowing that the instigators of the insurrection had proved too cowardly to take a hand themselves, and having witnessed for himself the irresolution and lack of organisation among the subordinates whom they had left to carry out their business, he could not believe that the ill-led mob would prove a serious menace. Four thousand armed and resolute men should have no difficulty at all in dealing with the sort of lukewarm rabble that it had taken Santerre and his friends all night to collect. If they had the guts to attack at all, a couple of volleys fired over their heads should be sufficient to send the whole lot running.

  Yet, with dramatic suddenness, the crisis was resolved. Shortly after 8.30 a.m. a report came in that the King and his family had left: the Tuileries, crossed its gardens to the riding-school, and placed themselves under the protection of the Assembly.

  Roger could hardly believe his ears, but the news was soon confirmed. The new Commissioners who, ten minutes before, had been glancing over their shoulders expecting loyal National Guards to burst in and arrest them all on the orders of the men they had just turned out, broke into a riot of cheers and rejoicing. Without a single shot being fired at the Palace, the day was theirs.

  Later Roger learned the tragic tale of weakness which had led to the surrender. No longer having the brave Mandat at his side, the King had lost his nerve. At the urging of his friends, he had gone out to inspect the National Guard; but miserable and uncertain of himself, he could not find a single brave or cheerful word to say to them. It did not seem to occur to him that they, far more than the half-foreign mob leavened with cut-throats—black, white and brown—from every port in the Mediterranean, were truly representative of his people. Barely acknowledging their cries of “Vive le Roi!”, he had shambled back into the Palace to await events. When the mob had entered the Place du Carrousel he had shown no trace of the fortitude he had displayed on the 20th of June; his eyes wet with tears, his hair disordered and his coat awry, he had looked round helplessly for guidance. Roederer and other officials who were present, and who were secretly in sympathy with the insurrection, advised him to seek safety with the Assembly. The Queen cried out indignantly that she would “rather be nailed to the walls of the Palace than leave it”, upon which Roederer had said to her:

  “You wish then, Madame, to make yourself responsible for the death of the King, of your own son, of your daughter, of yourself and of all those who would defend you?”

  Silenced by this blackmail, the Queen could only turn again to her husband. Looking out of the window he remarked, “It does not seem to be a very big mob.” Yet, without a shot being fired and with four thousand men to defend him, he added, “Let us go, then,” and turning to his nobles took leave of them with the words, “Messieurs, there is nothing more to be done here, either for you or for me.”

  Between a double line of National and Swiss Guards, the Royal Family and their immediate entourage then crossed the gardens of the Tuileries. As they did so the King remarked, “The leaves are falling early this year,” but when they reached the Porte des Feuillants he was at last shaken out of his hapless lethargy. The mob from the Faubourg St. Antoine had congregated there; thrusting the guards aside, they shook their fists in his face and in the Queen’s, spat at them and jostled them. The Queen’s purse and watch were snatched from her and, to her horror, a bearded giant wrenched the Dauphin from her arms; but he proved to be a loyal workman who was anxious only to protect the boy, and he carried him safely into the Assembly hall.

  To the uneasy and dour-faced deputies, the King said: “Messieurs, I have come here to prevent a great crime.”

  No one with whom Roger spoke doubted that the King believed what he said, but the fact remained that he did not prevent the crime to which he referred, although he might have done so by showing a little firmness. Instead, by his premature and abject surrender he had encouraged the mob to attack his loyal soldiers and subjects. Within a few minutes of his giving himself into the keeping of the politicians who had so consistently betrayed and humiliated him, the first shots were being fired against those who still thought him worth defending—those who, now that he had deprived them of their high inspiration to face death, were doomed to die with the bitter knowledge that they were giving their lives for no useful purpose whatsoever

  So, at nine o’clock on the morning of the 10th of August, 1792, that poor, well-meaning, befuddled man, in whose veins the blood of Henri Quatre and Le Grand Monarque had turned to water, betrayed and brought to an end the eight-hundred-years-old Monarchy of France.

  As soon as the shooting started Roger decided to go out and see what was happening. Now that victory seemed so unexpectedly and unwarrantably to have crowned the nervous bungling of the conspirators, it was no longer imperative that he should remain with them to maintain his new status; and he had a momentary flicker of hope that the firing might be caused by some resolute Royalists making a belated attempt to rescue the King from his own folly.

  At the door of the Chamber a Municipal employee, anxious to toady to his new masters, had produced some rolls of broad tricolore ribbon, and was snipping off lengths of it for any of the new Commissars who approached him. Roger availed himself of two yards, threw one end over his left shoulder and tied it to the other end in a big bow on his right hip. It was the symbol of authority which had been worn by the members of the old Municipal Council, and which meant far more in Paris than did the laced hat of a General. Running down the steps on which the heroic Marquis de Mandat had so recently been done to death, Roger emerged into the sunshine of the August morning as Citizen Commissioner Breuc.

  The Hôtel de Ville faced on to the Place de Grève—the Tyburn of Paris, in which great crowds collected whenever there was a public execution; but it was almost empty now, as the centre of the disturbance lay nearly three-quarters of a mile away. The southern end of the Place opened on to the river, so Roger hurried across it and along the quay. When he reached the end of the Pont Neuf he was slowed down by the crowd that was still streaming across it from the south bank, but by half-past nine he was near enough to see for himself the cause of the shooting. It was no attempt to rescue the Royal Family—the fédérés and the National Guards were attacking the Tuileries.

  Having penetrated with difficulty as far as one of the entrances to the Place du Carrousel he found that the attackers were shooting up at the windows of the Palace and that the soldiers at them were returning their fire. Retreating into cover, h
e came upon an officer of the National Guard who was staunching the blood from a slight wound in his arm, and asked him why, as the King had gone to the Assembly, fighting had broken out.

  With a respectful glance at Roger’s tricolore sash the officer replied, “It was the Marseillais, Citizen Commissioner; they have marched all the way to Paris not on account of the war, but in the hope of plunder. As soon as it was known that the King had left the Palace, General Westermann led them to the great gates over there; someone opened them and the main doors of the Palace as well. My men were in the Cour Royale, but as the King had gone they offered no resistance. The Swiss had retreated inside the building and a number of them were massed on the grand staircase. General Westermann called on them to lay down their arms, but they refused to do so, then some of the Marseillais used their long pikes with hooks at the end to pull the foremost Swiss from the staircase. Five of them were dragged out that way into the courtyard and butchered there. Who fired the first shot I don’t know, but if it was a Swiss one could not blame him. For a few moments the fighting became general, then the Swiss fired a couple of volleys and the fédérés took to their heels. The Swiss promptly cleared the court, and the situation became as you see it. That was half an hour ago.”

  “But why,” asked Roger, “have your men now joined the fédérés in shooting at the Swiss, instead of trying to keep order?”

  The officer shrugged. “They were in quite good heart early this morning, and were prepared to defend the Palace; but when the King came out to inspect us he made a very bad impression on them. His sneaking off to the Assembly finished him as far as they were concerned. When General Westermann’s crowd entered the Cour Royale the women among the mob began to get at them, and persuade them to fraternize with the Marseillais. My brother officers and I did what we could to stop them, but when the Swiss fired their volleys into the courtyard several women were killed; after that there was no stopping my men from going over to the mob.”

  For a further quarter of an hour desultory firing continued on both sides, then a sudden cry went up, “Save yourselves! Save yourselves!”

  Peering round his corner, Roger saw that a body of Swiss had made a sally from the Cour Royale. With well-disciplined precision they were driving the fédérés before them, winkling them from the cover of doorways and from some low buildings in the middle of the square as they advanced. Meanwhile the crowd was stampeding towards the river, and Roger was carried back with it on to the quay. In less than three minutes the Place du Carrousel had been completely cleared of the attackers; and the Swiss, taking their time, collected some small cannon that the Marseillais had abandoned in their flight, before returning unmolested to the Palace.

  The episode made Roger more than ever disgusted with the King, as it gave incontestable proof that he could have stayed with complete safety in the Tuileries. The building had been broken into only because, Mandat being dead, no order to resist had been given; yet, even then, the 750 Swiss that the King had left there had not only ousted the attackers but had also cleared its courts and approaches. With the full battalion, together with several hundred gentlemen and over 2,000 National Guards, he could not only have defied the mob, but used the riots as a legitimate excuse to deprive the treacherous Municipality of its power and to arrest the Committee of Insurrection. But, as it soon emerged, Louis XVI was that day to be guilty of something far worse than folly.

  When the Swiss had retired into the Palace the Marseillais edged cautiously forward again and resumed their sporadic firing at its windows. The fire was returned, but only for a few minutes; then, quite inexplicably, it ceased. Suspecting a trap, the attackers were most chary of advancing, but at length, goaded into action by the taunts of their women, a few of the boldest crept along the sides of the Place du Carrousel and into the Cour Royale. Still not a shot was fired at them, so greater numbers began to follow. The first group entered the doors of the Palace and, a moment later, emerged again to stand cheering wildly on its steps. The crowd surged forward and Roger, leaving his observation post, moved forward too. Another moment, and the reason for this bloodless victory was being passed excitedly from mouth to mouth. From the Assembly the King had sent a personally signed order to the Swiss that they were to cease fire and retire to their barracks.

  He had been told that the shots he had been hearing for upwards of an hour were those of his Swiss “massacring the people”; but a single thought for his devoted troops would have told him that, after a fight had been raging that long, to order them to cease fire without any guarantee that their opponents would reciprocate was to hand them over to the mercy of their enemies. Still worse, by ordering them to retire to their barracks he deprived them even of the shelter of his Palace, as in order to obey him they had to leave it and cross the Tuileries gardens, which meant running the gauntlet between strong bands of armed insurgents. Neither did he spare a thought for the several hundred gentlemen who had come to the Palace during the night prepared to die for him; it was as certain as the sun would set that the very sight of these aristos would arouse the bloodlust of the mob. Scarcely an hour earlier, just as he was about to enter the Assembly, three of their class had been butchered before his eyes. By ordering the Swiss to evacuate the Palace he was also depriving them of the help necessary to defend it, and so by this horrible betrayal he was abandoning many of his personal friends to massacre. Had he sat down and signed a thousand death warrants he could not have better ensured the deaths of these loyal troops and subjects.

  By the time Roger had pushed his way into the Palace the shooting had already started on its far side. Making his way upstairs, he reached a window that looked out on the gardens; below him was a spectacle that made tears of rage and frustration spring to his eyes. With incredible courage and iron discipline two long columns of Swiss were marching steadily down the main avenue. From behind the trees the fédérés were shooting at them, yet not one of them made a movement to disobey the King’s order and return the murderous fire to which they were subjected. As the columns advanced their wounded and dying fell and were left behind. Like human hyenas the canaille of the Faubourgs then rushed upon them, stripped them naked and hacked them to pieces with cutlasses and knives. Near the statue of Louis XV one column, now ragged and leaving a ghastly trail of blood from the hundreds of wounds it had sustained, faltered to a halt and attempted to form a square. But most of the survivors were already dying on their feet and were no longer capable of resistance. Like a tidal wave the mob engulfed them. Sick and shaken, Roger turned away to avoid witnessing the final massacre.

  In spite of the heat of the day a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead. He felt ill, dizzy and temporarily incapable of coordinating his thoughts. In the distance he could now hear shots being fired inside the Palace, and from the embrasure of the window in which he stood he gazed helplessly upon a ghastly scene.

  The fédérés from Marseilles and from the Breton ports had been the first to burst into the Palace. At least half of the former were sea-rovers—Genoese, Moors, Sicilians and Arabs. Among the latter were many negroes and mulattos, taken from the plantations to man the ships that traded between the French West Indies and Brest and Nantes. From these brutal corsairs and ex-slaves Roger’s scarf of office served to protect him personally, but he knew that his immunity would last only so long as he refrained from interfering with them.

  Detachments of them had lost no time in breaking into the cellars, and were now bringing up baskets stacked high with bottles to share with their comrades. Regardless of whether the bottles contained wine or spirits, they were knocking off their tops and gulping the liquor from their necks. In an incredibly short time they were reeling drunk and seized with a senseless urge for destruction. They shattered the great mirrors with blows from their weapons, hurled priceless china and clocks to the floor, smashed the lovely furniture to matchwood and threw the pieces from the windows.

  Had Roger had any plan, or any definite task to perform, he would have don
e his utmost to execute it; as it was he could think only of escaping from this hellish imbroglio. The door by which he had entered was now blocked by a seething mass of people, forced forward by the horde that was still pouring up the grand staircase. Turning in the other direction, he managed to elbow his way out through the far door.

  The crowd was less dense in the salon beyond it, but the scene more horrifying. Three gentlemen lay huddled in a corner more dead than alive with bleeding heads and faces, and a score of ruffians were finishing them off by pelting them with ornaments and empty bottles.

  Reaching a corridor, Roger saw that one end of it was blocked by a group committing another murder. In the other direction he glimpsed a side staircase and ran towards it. The sounds of shots, screams and curses were louder now. One company of the Swiss had failed to receive the order to retire and, on the incursion by the mob, had scattered about that end of the Palace; in groups and individually they were now being hunted to their deaths.

  As Roger reached the staircase one of them came plunging down it, tripped and fell on the landing. Instantly his pursuers leapt upon him, dragged him to his feet and thrust him backwards across the banisters. With a demoniacal screech a tousle-headed harridan sprang forward and drew her knife across his throat.

  Roger had shed his own blood and that of numerous other people without turning a hair, but at the sight of the poor wretch’s gore spurting from the ghastly wound his stomach turned over. Swerving away, he pushed open a nearby door, staggered across a little ante-chamber and vomited in a corner.

  When his nausea had eased a little, he went out by another door and found himself in a bedroom. Some women there had pulled the clothes from the wardrobes and, having half-stripped themselves of their rags, were arraying themselves in a court lady’s finery. On seeing Roger one of them flung her arms round his neck, kissed him and belched in his face, while the others roared with drunken laughter.